Granogue

Oh man. This weekend was a lesson in what not to do when you're trying to race well. Day one was is in beautiful Delaware on property owned by the Du Pont family. This was my first visit to Delaware and it was a short but good one considering the race was only about nine miles south of the Pennsylvania border. I was pretty confident going into the weekend after a solid four days of training in the 70 degree temps on sun soaked farm roads of Amish country in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. I've been staying at my uncle Tom and aunt Diane's house and they've been taking way too good of care of me which has been awesome. I had host housing arranged but the house is so well located in Lititz, which is near Intercourse and Blueball, that I decided to head to the races from here since I was already settled in. The drive time to Delaware was about and hour and a half but was prolonged by traffic lights and what seemed like an unnessecary volume of cars. I put the pedal to the floor when I had the opportunity and made it to the race by about 2pm which I felt was plenty of time for a 3:30 start time; and it would have been but unfortunately the race started at 2:30 (roar of laughter here). I ended up pulling into the race parking at 5 after 2 and then had to run to registration, pin numbers, dress, put my wheels on, and then I really had to pee. I rolled up to the starting area and was only there for about a minute before the race official told me I had to go to the finish line for a special call up with all the other super stars. This was good because it gave me a chance to actually ride my bike before the start. After some last minute shuffling on the start grid I ended up getting demoted to the third row, whatever. I had an ok start but then crashed on an off-camber (I didn't see the course before the first lap) which put be back a few more unnecessary places but it was only a few scrapes on my calf. I got rolling again but it took me a couple laps and another minor snafu tangle with a pole before I got the course down and the pain from no warm-up out of my legs. After that I was on cruise control and I moved my way through riders from 30 up to 20th spot quickly closing on the next rider just seconds up the road. I finished strong and I felt like if I had actually been on time my good legs would have ridden me to a good result. That's just life when being a dumb shit.